Upcoming Features

Arenanet is going to be introducing a lot of features in the April 15th patch and there has been a lot of speculation over the past few months about it. I just thought I’d chime in with some of my own speculation before they announce everything, which they’ve already started doing.

They’ve announced that they’re introducing new traits and a slightly redesigned trait system. Some of the new traits seem to be addressing some missing elements from gameplay so I’m excited to try some of them out, especially since it’ll be super convenient to change traits a lot. That trait reset gem store item doesn’t count as convenience due to the immense rip off. It is already gone from the gem store so I’m happy about that.

The other new thing about traits is the exploration aspect. They say we’ll be going out into the world, much as with skill points, to acquire some of these traits. That sounds excellent and is a harkening back to before launch when it was said this would be possible.

Fortunately for speculation purposes Arenanet has titled and dated their future posts on the patch.

mar 21: The Art of Combat
March 21st Critical!
March 24th A New Way to Explore the Looks of Guild Wars 2
March 24th A Colorful Outlook
March 26th Looking For Group?
March 27th Removing Restrictions
March 27th Account-Bound
March 28th A Solid Foundation
April 2nd Facilitating Friendly Play
April 3rd Facilitating Friendly Play: Part Two
April 4th Facilitating Friendly Play: Part Three

So I’ve just got a few thoughts on the subjects that these titles probably cover.

Art of Combat is almost certainly about PvP. Their Ready Up livestream is typically hosted by their PvP team and they have one scheduled the same day. There have been plenty of rumours about upcoming changes to PvP but the one I think most people are hopeful for is different game types. So far since launch there has only been Conquest, a point capture game. I think people would like to see the game types break out into Capture The Flag or perhaps some Deathmatch, VIP protection, etc. Glory has also recently been removed from PvP so a lot of people are looking for the new replacement for that reward.

Critical is likely the changes to Critical Damage that they mentioned some time back. The meta game in Guild Wars 2 has always been about Beserker stats, power, precision, and critical damage. Essentially I guess they’re looking to finally nerf that, and if I recall correctly it will be nerfed by about 10%. I feel like this should have been done a long, long, long time ago, but I’m glad it’s happening.

A new way to explore the looks of Guild Wars 2 is probably the long hinted at wardrobe. Something like 8 months ago they mentioned they were looking to overhaul the town clothes system, but until recently there hadn’t been a further peep out of them. Except if you paid attention to the PvP side of things where they said that they were looking to merge PvP gear with PvE gear. Since PvP players have a pretty extensive locker I’ve been theorizing for some time about a new wardrobe. Unfortunately due to the Chinese beta of GW2 there is a lot of unfounded speculation going around about how many gems it will cost and how similar it will be to China. I’m optimistic though and hoping things will be relatively reasonable.

A colourful outlook has got to be account bound dyes. Mike O’Brien did an interview to hype the Chinese launch of GW2 and said that Chinese players had account bound dyes and that they’d be looking to make the same change for the rest of us. I highly doubt that any part of the Chinese beta would effect how the dye system will be implemented here so I won’t speculate.

Looking for Group? Seems pretty obvious really except, I can’t think of anything they need to talk about. The LFG system is still in beta, but taking it out of beta doesn’t seem noteworthy. It’s been running fine for a long time. Unless this is some clue to Commander upgrades, raid parties, or similar, I am clueless.

Removing Restrictions is anyone’s guess. We are restricted from a lot of things. Playing in Europe, multiple dungeon runs on the same path, guesting to more than 2 other servers, sending too many mails, speaking too often in chat, posting too many items on the AH per minute, etc. I’m hoping I’ll be pleasantly surprised by something here.

Account Bound has got to be the WvW ranks which have been promised to be account bound for quite some time. Not much else to comment on there, I imagine my rank will end up being 70ish. Although my friend who plays WvW a lot more than me said she’d end up being around 535ish.

A Solid Foundation seems to refer to the new player experience. The Chinese beta has reworked quite a number of systems so that they unlock at varying levels to better introduce players to the game. It seems like it’s likely they’ll simply transfer that over to us as well. I’ve always felt like I don’t need as much hand-holding as Arenanet is willing to give but I’m sure there are players who need this. Not to mention there are statistics that show large numbers of players give up on an MMO within the first 10 levels.

Facilitating Friendly Play, in 3 parts, must refer to guilds I would suspect. Whether that means new guild missions and new features for guilds or simply fixing old issues that have been a problem since launch is difficult to say, but seeing that there are 3 whole posts about it makes me think it might be both. I’m hoping for more things to spend Guild Merits on and some of the old issues to be finally and irrevocably fixed.

Anyway that’s my take on what we’ve got coming up in the feature patch. Can’t wait to see what we actually get.

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3 Comments

I just want they start the living story season 2 soon. Not sure how the upcoming features will affect my gameplay, but I am at the middle of crafting my ascended gear and I have the stats I like: longbow ranger with high critical(50+ % critical). So, I need see how the new critical system and the new traits will work for my playstyle. Account bound colors and an wardrobe system will be nice, however.

I feel they will really implement a lot fo things they made for the chinese version. So, after the feature patch and the chinese launch, we will see the second season living story starting.

I want see new zones and the new dragon. We know they will come with the second season. But can we hope for a new race?